Story:The End of Eternity/E12
XII Klaytaza had been destroyed by the previous Key and Master duo, and a new group of enemy Keys stood ready to battle now. They were all completely identical in their tight black bodysuits, off-white armor, and sword/shield arsenals. About five of them fit shoulder to shoulder in the decrepit street, and it was clear to see that legion upon legion of these enemies stood waiting, like an army of angels ready to strike down blasphemers. Arend turned and ran. He had the double-bladed longsword in his hand, and with its oddly light weight he could have easily used it as a weapon, but there was no way he would win in a fight of uncountable enemy Keys. Especially without Klaytaza’s help. The Keys followed him slowly, marching in time with each other and stalking towards him. Even when Arend turned a corner and left the view of them, he found that he could still hear this constant, unchanging marching. Their steps did not dull in volume no matter how far he ran. There was no way for him to fight such a large enemy. He had only the chance of absconding until Klaytaza returned to his side and could fight them off with her weaponry and time-slaying ability… If she even could regenerate. It came to Arend’s mind that the army of enemies, in following him, must have trampled and crushed the remains of Klaytaza’s body. Could she regenerate even if there were no remnants of her body? Would being trampled destroy her core? Without such an organ, would she be able to stop time even if she was reborn? There was no way to answer these questions without testing them out in reality – and doing so would get him killed. Arend felt the cold hands of despair moving towards him again. Just when he was starting to wonder how he would get out of this situation, Arend turned another corner and noticed a figure ahead of him turning a corner as well and disappearing from his vision. He instantly stopped in confusion. Could there be another person pursuing him? Or could the specter had been the Master of the Keys behind him, evading his vision in order to stay safe? Looking down at the large blade in his hand, Arend knew there was only one path he could take here. Running at a higher speed than before, he dashed forward to the space in which the figure disappeared, his sword trailing behind him in a position to strike. This time, when he turned the corner, Arend noticed the absconding specter again, albeit this time with a long sword trailing behind him. Arend stopped in his tracks once again. This time, he was struck dumb by the implication of what he was seeing. Just to make sure he wasn’t going insane, he returned to where he made the turn through the alleyways into the narrow street and poked his long blade into its dark corridor. Down the street some distance, the tip of a thin longsword suddenly protruded and came into view. He almost dropped the sword when this came to pass. Somehow, Arend was trapped within the confines of that which he could see. The downtrodden, gray palette street was composed of empty, lifeless buildings and a loop of time and space. Behind him trudged the ever-close army of Keys; in front of him still awaited the other remaining 988 Keys to Eternity, plotting for his destruction; and above him still loomed the red moon, inching ever closer to the earth and its final moments. There was truly no escape. He thought about going through the loop anyway in order to buy time until Klaytaza regenerated, but this did not solve the problem of her as-of-yet to be found body. There was always the option of running forward through the street to escape, but he would eventually meet another Key and Master duo and his death would only come faster. Finally, there was the option of going backwards and facing certain doom head-on. But despite his words otherwise, Arend did not want to die. There was too much at stake to give up now. He had sworn on everything he knew to change things, to eradicate them, and that was just what he would do. Death was not an option. That left precious few options for him, though. Try all he wanted, Arend simply could not find anything else that he could do in the situation he was in, and complete mental focus was impossible thanks to the visual image of the moon in the sky and the auditory cues of the oncoming army. As he stumbled to the edge of the street and laid a hand onto the wall of a building with no windows, Arend wished more than anything that he had more time. Time to think. Time to run away, or time to act. He needed to stop time… but for this he needed Klaytaza. Although he could muster up the ability to pause the clock without commanding her, it could only be done when she was near and had the power of her core. He had none of those – thus, he could not stop time. “Dammit!” Arend cried as he ran through the spatial loop once again. Just as before, he ended up in the exact same street, but the increasing volume of the stampede of enemies behind him had returned to their usual murmur. That action had bought him a minute or two, at least. He continued to run the gauntlet of the spatial loop for an incomprehensible amount of time. Pain began to build up in Arend’s muscles and he began to breathe heavily from the running, but none of this was important in his mind at the moment. All the boy could think of as he shivered from the breeze created by his sprinting was the task at hand. No matter how he looked at it, the process only created more and more questions for the boy. Was the time/space loop simply a consequence of the world ending, like the climate change? Or was it the power of a specific Key to Eternity? What if, instead of manipulating space through a portal of sorts, the disturbance was transporting Arend through time? Did such a thing erase any possible futures or tamper with the actual timeline, or was this the projected outcome of his journey all along? If he stopped time, would that even affect the loop’s ability to transport him through existence? Was the past and the future simply an abstract concept, only created when he merged his present time with the reality that the loophole projected? Most importantly, how would he escape? “You’re having fun, aren’t you?” The voice stopped Arend in his tracks. Halfway in the middle of the street’s length, he turned around to meet the source of the taunt. Standing behind him with arms crossed was a tall, middle-aged man in a white long jacket and black pants. He looked at Arend with a mixture of disdain and amusement. “Running around like a rat in a maze,” the man stated. “And you’re supposed to be the threat that will bring all of existence to an end?” Arend thought about moving and striking the man with his blade, but he was physically exhausted and had no idea what surprises the enemy had in their sleeve. He decided to play it safe, at least until he caught his breath. “And you’re supposed to be the Creator’s chosen warrior? Intimidating.” “Don’t bother taunting me, boy. I won’t fall for your base tricks like the others have.” “What tricks? I only speak the truth. What they told you was a lie.” “How can one who knows only lies speak of truths so? It is amazing. Why, you cannot even see when the very space around you is a lie!” The man spoke in an incredibly condescending tone, as if he were a wise elder speaking to a child just barely learning how to talk; it irritated Arend. He began to realize this conversation was having the opposite of its intended effect. “So this must be the ability of your Key… Creating this loophole. How are you doing it? Do you twist space or subvert time?” “That is where you fail, young rebel.” The man ran his hand through his greased-back brown locks. “You assume that this world still follows the laws of physics as a whole. Existence as we know it has long ago began to break apart in preparation for the Thousand Eternal Salvation; I am simply a manipulator of this chaos. Organizing pockets of time and space with others, I effectively create tiny pocket dimensions that eliminate the distance and travel time between two points – my ability transcends mere scientific labels of which you speak.” “Talkative, aren’t we…” Arend stood up a little bit straighter as a plan began to form in his head. “That doesn’t answer anything. Mind enlightening me a bit further before I meet divine judgment? Is every moment in time a permanent existence, or does past and future yield to the present as the grains of sand fall?” “You are a narcissistic fool… but one who intrigues me. If only you had chosen the side of the Creator…” “Answer me,” Arend commanded. The man chuckled in response. “A child like you… To think you have the right to question God? To think any of us do?” “Answer me!” Arend was becoming increasingly anxious and impatient as the stomping of the oncoming army only grew in volume. The man folded his arms and looked to Arend with a serene smile. “I understand you completely. All of us do. You strike back against the Creator; you reject the concept of faith; you try to stand on your own when the rest of us know to abide within him. The Creator is transcendent, divine, and omniscient – to try to resist or comprehend him is blasphemous. It is madness!” Arend began to walk forward, his double-bladed Weapon Artifact brandished forward in front of him. “I’ll kill you if you won’t talk,” he spat. “Then this will end immediately.” The man let out another condescending, mysterious chuckle. “You’re wrong again. Have you not been told already that you absolutely cannot win? You killing us would only hasten our salvation. And if you die, the salvation continues unabated. Either way, there is no stopping it… The world will end, and it will be reborn. There is no defying all of creation!” “You’re wrong!” Arend shouted. He ran forward with a swipe of his blade; the enemy in front of him deftly dodged it. Arend faltered. The boy may have been fighting an unarmed opponent with a colossal weapon, but he was untrained, cold, hungry, and in the midst of despair. “I will win. Nothing can tell me otherwise, because I know my ideals are correct! I and my Key have seen the faults of humanity!” “You’ve seen the faults of humanity, or you’ve seen your own faults?” Arend stopped in his tracks with wide eyes. His sword hand lay quivering in the air. “Don’t… Don’t make this about me. This isn’t about me…!” “But it is! That’s what this is all about. A spoiled, deranged child wanting to lay waste to structures he cannot begin to fathom. How could you hope to go against us, who represent all of humanity’s positives, and claim you are any different? Deep inside you make mistakes as well. You feel the human instincts and emotions all of us do. You are just a human trying to fight a God and all his children. You understand nothing. You can achieve nothing.” Arend lowered his blade, but his face still shone with determination. “You are wrong in assuming I am nothing. I know my flaws... more than anyone else on this planet. You have proven that to me.” He slowly began to regain his confidence as he started to glare at the man in front of him. “Because I know I am nothing… I can embrace the void in my heart. I can become everything in a flash of nothing. Your God is dead!” Now the man looked at Arend with righteous fury shining in his face’s wrinkles. “One who does not live cannot die. You speak ignorant blasphemy!” “One who does not live cannot exist. There is no proof behind any of your words!” “We must have faith! We have faith that the sun will rise every morning, and that it will set every night! We have faith that this earth can support us, and that by breathing we can perpetuate our lives!” “That is not faith. That is foolish and misguided assumptions! The only proof in this world is the very world around us! The earth crumbles! There are no other living things to subside off its dust! We kill and steal from each other every day! We have done nothing but destroy the gallery of a universe around us!” Arend began to speak so passionately and quickly that tears threatened to fall from his eyes. “The gallery of our universe is run by the Creator! Only an immortal emperor as himself could have formed that which we destroy!” The man was sweating out of his modest dress shirt and khakis from his passion, as well. “The very fact that we can destroy and ruin is testament to the Creator’s power. All of the mysteries in creation can be answered by creation itself!” Now Arend let off a dangerous smirk. “So you agree that we destroy? That all of humanity is one giant sin?” The color drained from the faithful Master’s face. “You… you are not right. There’s absolutely no way you’re correct… You must know that! The point of the Thousand Eternal Ritual is to redeem us of our sins… So that we may correct them!” The marching of the army of Keys was almost thundering in its volume by now. Their endless ranks were visible behind the enemy man, all of them marching closer and closer to the two with each passing second. Arend stood at his full height and allowed himself to lean on his blade as it touched the grimy ground beneath him. “Perhaps I am not correct. Perhaps none of us are. But I will stop this Ritual, and I will eradicate existence. We have already been redeemed and reborn many times over…” Natalia’s face flashed in Arend’s mind as he stated this fact, and he grimaced in emotional pain. “There will be no more second chances. We don’t deserve it anymore.” As the army of Keys advanced from behind the man and immediately engulfed him with their hands as they came upon them, their movements did not stop. The enemy Master only laughed as his allies sightlessly ripped him apart with their bare hands. “We are imaginary, but living – our bodies are hardy, yet fleeting. The Creator; no, the All-Father; he requires only our faith! Our beliefs! And no one has anything else to tell!” With his final cries, he was engulfed by the gigantic wave of identical Keys, his body instantly crushed and torn asunder. The instant his heart stopped beating was the same instant that the Keys reached their hands towards Arend. After this instant, he found himself suddenly in a different area of the city, standing in front of a dilapidated clearing with Klaytaza’s ruined body sitting in front of him on the ground. The transition had been so quickly, so effortlessly, and so efficiently, that Arend realized that it must have been a result of the Master dying. His ability must have expired, thus placing Arend and his fallen Key in the area of the city they should have been in had the space/time loop not existed; thus, they were far away from the ominous army of clones. Arend shook his head with relief and rubbed the back of his neck. Truthfully, stalling the man until he could be killed by his own allies was a last-minute plan that, admittedly, was not what Arend wanted to do. The fact that it had worked out was pure luck… or, ironically, perhaps a stroke of divine favor. He looked up as the double-sided blade in his hand returned to its natural state as a pen, and promptly dropped the pen in shock. The red moon was much, much closer to the city. It was so very close to the earth that its circumference seemed to take up a large portion of the visible atmosphere, and only grew closer with every passing second. Clouds seemed dangerously disrupted by the incoming celestial object and wrapped around it with sublime fury. Thanks to the proximity of the object and the sheer intensity of the light it reflected from the sun, all of the night sky was brightly streaked with red, as if licked by fire. As he was gazing up at the disturbing sky, Arend didn’t notice the regeneration of his Key until she stood next to him. He spoke to her with his voice threatening to crumble from fear. “This… this is catastrophic. Klaytaza… It’s so close I feel like I can reach up and claw it down. What has happened? Why is the moon so much closer than it was a second ago?” The moment after he asked this question, Arend’s eyes widened as he realized the true answer. He has said himself that the enemy was manipulating both time and space. He had not only been trapped in a spatial loop, but apparently Arend had been removed from time itself in the time he was running and arguing. The ability must have lasted days for the Thousand Eternal Ritual to have progressed to such a stage. “The end is coming much sooner than we anticipated, Master,” Klaytaza vaguely stated. “I can feel the earth’s temperatures beginning to change and its lands beginning to tremble. The Ark is not far away at all. The Thousand Eternal Ritual is all but completed, and in doing so, most of the Keys and their Masters have given up their life forces to ensure the final steps are completed.” “So… you’re saying that most of the enemies… are dead? But the Ritual has gone on uninhibited while we were distracted?” “Correct, Master.” She looked at Arend with those same orange eyes of hers outlined by black scars, but now more than ever she seemed to scream with emotion. Above those tear-shaped lines, within her deep and artificial eyes, Arend swore he could see nothing but pain and emotional agony. “At this point, I fear the Thousand Eternal Ritual cannot be stopped.” KEYS TO ETERNITY REMAINING: 5